25th annual CHER conference – current trends in HE research

In this post, Hedda associate Mari Elken collects some impressions from the latest CHER conference. What were the main themes that emerged and what were the highlights of the conference?
Earlier in September the 25th CHER (Consortium for Higher Education Research) conference was held in Belgrade, co-hosted the Centre for Education Policy (CEP) and the Centre for Education Policy Studies of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Education (CEPS), and this year was themed “Higher Education and Social Dynamics”. Connected to this, the second ECHER (Early Career Higher Education Researchers) network was held, and the conference was ended with a post-conference symposium in Ljubljana.
CHER covers a wide range of topics and as a conference it aims to be a comprehensive one, covering various aspects of higher education research. While this was also the case in Beograd, one can notice that there is a relative skewness towards policy, governnace and organisational topics. When commenting on the impressions on main themes, Dominik Antonowicz, a researcher from Poland, highlighted two: autonomy and internationalisation, and he was pleased that the latter is ”no longer seen as a process of “universities becoming more international” but internationalisation is more like a way to sell  normative political and institutional order“.
However, issues such as teaching and learning in higher education tend to gain less focus, which can be argued to be somewhat of a downside, provided that conferences also have an important role in knowledge sharing and the lack of focus on one of the core activities of universities means that a piece of the puzzle might be missing and some important connections between research agendas will be lacking. This is by no means the fault of the organisers, but a wider question of turfs and territories and the unfortunate division between various disciplinary traditions.
As the conference took place in Western Balkans, this as also an opportunity to set the region in the research agenda. Dominik thought that this was exactly that happened during the conference “the research spot is in now on Western Balkans. A number of presentation concerned issues in this region. Lots of topics, researchers, questions to address. Clearly, it deserves better attention and I am personally glad that because there is a wide range of similarities between CEE and WB“. A separate panel was held on the large project focusing on the region led by CEPS, and a number of other papers in various sessions focused on the region, covering topics from the civic mission of universities to the academic profession, to internationalisation aims and impacts of European ideas. A large number of these papers were presented by researchers from the region, something Hedda associate Martina Vukasovic also put forward as one of her highlights of the conference.
The conference also featured three keynote speeches, amongst these Hugh Lauder from University of Bath, highlighted by another Hedda associate Romulo Pinheiro as the highlight of his conference. Lauder set a critical view on knowledge economy as a concept and assumptions of human capital theory, where learning=earning. Highlighting empirical data from a large project focusing on transnational companies he gave insights how increasing human capital and skill levels has not meant a general reduction of povery, thus shaking the assumptions of ‘trickling down’ and spillovers. And not only that, the wage premium for increased skills is not there in broad terms. As such, he called for a more active approach and opposition towards what he called the “knowledge capitalism”. The other keynotes included Srbijanka Turajlić who highlighted the issues of employability in the  region and Maarten Simons who examined university education as a collective/public practice.
Looking back  at the conference and not least the post conference symposium, one sits with an impression that a large amount of self reflection took place with a common concern about higher education research and its future – concerns that have their origin in the implications of funding and resources, disciplinary connections and methodology.
There seems to be an aknowledgemenet that there is a new reality for higher  education researchers, a reality imbued with policy ambitions of various national or supranational bodies, and where research is increasingly done in multiple knowledge production centres outside traditional research practice (i.e. consultancy firms). In a tighter funding situation where some funding either comes from agencies with strong normative implications, or implies cooperation with consultancy firms, this requires a new set of skills from the researchers. There is little doubt that this can be seen as an unfortunate development, perhaps leading towards a more superficial account on what kind and how certain knowledge research can be produced, in addition to the implications of this to basic research. Where researchers are modest, ambiguous and uncertain, there seems to be a need for certain and bold evidence that assures and supports the necessary success of new policy ambitions.
Nevertheless, it is also the responsibility of the researchers to highlight the issues with this, rather than sit back and complain to each other about the dire state of affairs. This means there is a necessity to be more active in the public debate about the types of expert knowledge higher education researchers have that cannot be gained from other sources. By higher education being so central in the knowledge economy, the research expertise that higher education researchers have is unique and necessary, also raising questions on how this competence should be organised internationally and what are the possible routes for collaboration and coordination. What the correct answer is, is of course up for debate, but the defeatist doom and gloom scenarios do not really help.
Another concern that was highlighted during a number of presentations, panels and the symposium was the role of disciplines. Higher education being a field with no disciplinary core of its own, the shaky feet of the knowledge domain were a topic for debate. Thus themes linked to the role of disciplines, whether we have higher education specialists or generalists, and the general question of identity were high on the agenda. This was further highlighted by the calls for more methodological rigour in higher education research with link to the core disciplines. While this is to an extent the case, one could also argue that in social sciences there is at least some common platform for methodology, and it is also possible to do methodologically rigorous research in a multidisciplinary context. As such, the issue of methodology and issue of disciplines should perhaps kept separate, while both of them being important.
While focus on strenghtening the disciplines seemed to gain support at CHER, one should note that despite there being a number of higher education researchers with linkages to political science, for instance  last years large ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) conference only had a few of them present. While the situation might be  somewhat different for sociology or some of the other disciplines, it seems that the unfortunate tendency is that at the higher education conferences such as CHER there is a yearning towards the disciplines (but without sufficient activity from the researchers themselves), and at the large disciplinary conferences there is an impression that there is no research on higher education. Perhaps it is time to stop talking and start doing and showing that higher education research can play ball on  both sides and how the two do not contradict but complement. And yes, there are those who do this already, but perhaps more should follow.
Despite the usual doom and gloom stories of the future, some positive things also emerged. Also noted by Martina Vukasovic as being the second of her conference highlights, there is a large number of young researchers, both as members of larger research teams, but also as presenting their work independently and actively engaging in the debates. As a follow-up to the initiative started in Iceland, the network for early career researchers (ECHER) provided a platform for some good discussions. Still in its infancy the ECHER workshop debates this time to a large extent focused on the purposes of such network and potential activities. However, they also included also presentations from experienced researchers, for instance a presentation from Jussi Välimaa on how to publish in the Higher Education journal, and presentations from Christine Musselin and David Hoffman on the potential outlooks of such network. More activities can be expected during upcoming higher education conferences, both CHER and others (and, if you are an early career researcher and not a member yet - click here!!).
Last but not least, the organisers deserve a sincere gratulation. The well planned event, smooth organisation and inclusive atmosphere was to be felt throughout – and not to forget the wonderful food. And since we on the Hedda blog, perhaps we should mention that it was a graduate of the Hedda master programme, Jelena Brankovic, who was responsible for the academic coordination of the conference. Congrats, and thanks to you and your whole team!